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CLARIFICATION (7/1/01):
Actress Chris Weatherhead's performance for C-Span, to be aired Wednesday at 2 p.m., on C-Span-2, is from her own play "Mary Chesnut's War for Independence," not on Kenneth Graham's play, "A World Kicked to Pieces: Mary Boykin Chesnut On Love & War," which Weatherhead had previously performed and toured from 1996 to 1999. Chris Weatherhead is the fastest juggler in town. But instead of plates, it's plays she keeps whirling in the air.
The Los Angeles native, her auburn hair whipping around in a stiff breeze on the Folly Beach Pier, talks about why she is happy about finally being in control of her career and her life.
"South Carolina is a place where serious, professional theater can thrive, and it's a perfect locale for movies to be filmed," the actress says. "Having worked for years in New York and Los Angeles, I feel the local talent here, both in acting and technical work, is exceptional."
At first glance, Folly Beach may seem an unlikely place to find this versatile actress, whose career in theater and television, spanning 30 years, includes guest-starring roles on television shows such as "Dallas" "Equal Justice," "Night Court" and "Moonlighting." Her career also involves a number of credits in New York, where she performed with the likes of Christopher Reeve, Christopher Walken and Blythe Danner.
While Weatherhead and her actor husband, South Carolina native Clarence Felder, had been settled for 10 years in Marina del Rey on the West Coast, everything changed when they made an extended visit to the Midlands in 1994 to visit Felder's ill mother. After driving around the state, they decided to stay. Then, after five years in Columbia, where she and Felder formed the Actors' Theatre of South Carolina, they decided to move to the Lowcountry.
Since then, the company, with Felder as artistic director, has produced such superb stage work as "2: Goering at Nuremberg" and "A Christmas Carol" at the Garden Theatre.
Weatherhead's next project will be seen Thursday, when she directs "Whispers and Dreams: Voices of South Carolina Slave Children" at the Sottile Theatre to benefit the College of Charleston's Avery Institute of African-American History and Culture.
Starring veteran actors Teresa Smith, Joanna Crowell, Charles Venning and Henry Clay...